Just brunching here with a bowl of avocado, tomato and herbed-marinated feta, with a splash of sweet balsamic and a sprinkle of Kosher salt. Pass the kalamatas, please.
Watching the original “Dragnet” movie from 1954 on my first “off” day in….awhile. :)
Alliteration intended. It is my battle cry.
It was a terrible photo as photos go, blurry, off-center, cam-moving. But this is what I saw. I am keeping it forever and for always…
There was this field way out on west 120th in Broomfield, when it was a sorry-looking two-laner. Abandoned farmland with giant for sale signs back a ways disappeared completely when you suddenly came upon this field of purply-periwinklish-blue-tones-with-lavender-and-the-slightest-whisper-of-pinkish-white spiked clusters of flowers.
I had no idea what they were. I had never owned a flower or bought one at that time, didn’t garden and still despised my only gardening experience which included some weeding and picking snap beans for my parents as a girl.
But weekly, when we’d deliver Tara and Stephanie to a small church youth group that seemed way out in the country, there they were, swaying in just the most mystical-Monet colors. It was like looking right at an impressionistic painting – A whole field of these soft, beautiful flowers.
This is just a google image, but reminds me of those days…
Not long later, I realized my neighbor had the same growing all along her back fence. “They are Delphinium,” she told me. “They just seed themselves each year.” And I watched daily as they grew and the slender stalks became so heavy with the flora some would topple right over, but for the most part, they crowded together and held each other up and reached high and then higher and the landscape was free and blue. Seriously breathtaking.
That field has since, some 15 years later, become a strip mall, which is not nearly so beautiful. I moved away from the neighbor whose delphinium happily waved across the fence to me daily.
I just bought 3 clearance pots for this postage-stamp-sized yard of a garden I have. And busyness has caused me to neglect them woefully, leaving them in these inadequate pots on the concrete patio for days…weeks? But doggone if those poor root-bound specimens aren’t blooming in total glory for me anyway.
On my patio this morning. Waiting to be attended to.
I have these grainy-Polaroid-brilliant-colored memories of life at 1723 York Street in Des Moines. I know the idyllic childhood of my memories may be actually less glorious and so much more mundane and average. But if you have a good memory, it pays to hold onto to it, I think.
So when I tell my mom that I watch for that house to sell and that I have dreams about it and long for the barefoot summer evenings of catching fireflies and doing relays with neighbor kids there, when I tell her the watermelon in the backyard pieces of my heart make me want to go back there to remember the little-girl-me, I am always taken aback by her reaction.
She usually wrinkles her nose, shakes her head and says, “Oh, not me. I don’t like Des Moines.”
Shocks me I suppose because while I was having this fairly delightful, carefree (as least as carefree as I have ever been) childhood, my mom was being reminded of painful things she went through as a child. Even being married to the man she adored and having all the babies she ever wanted couldn’t make her forget.
She is writing her story in a book for me and oh, I love hearing her journey. But as a child of divorce before she was even two, there was much pain and shame. And her earliest memories and many of her childhood planned photos were in front of the Polk County Courthouse, where custody was often negotiated, in a time when men just simply were not the first choice.
Yet another trip to a mental hospital for my grandma when my mom and her sister were very young dealt a devastating blow to the 2 little girls ripped between homes and spaces. For so strong was the contentiousness over custody, my mom’s aunt delivered my mom and her sister to the Polk Count Juvenile Home to be left with cold strangers whose job it was to direct the children.
I recall her showing me the building when I was a little girl. And telling me a few things she remembered that seemed just awful. I won’t tell her stories here, for they are too sacred and terrible to share. But I remembered the cold desolation of it – that horrible place my mom never should have been. May it suffice when I say that those little girls, those sisters who huddled close, whose mommy was just suddenly gone were placed in an institution, not a “home.” There was no nurture, no talk and comfort. Just be good. Do not cry or else. And no one had the decency to call her dad to rescue her.
A couple of years ago she and I went on a quest to find a photo of the building for her book. My cousin Steve recently was able to find photos and old news articles. He sent a new piece to the puzzle today and there was an address. (see below)
The Des Moines Tribune, 1912
I google-mapped it and it was only 1.2 miles from that idyllic house of my heart and dreams. For me, my mom was providing a home, a safe place, a dog-in-the-yard and skipping to school in sunshine. But she was just blocks from her opposite.
There are things moms do for their children….
More bees, less wasps. A very good thing!
Butterflies regularly floating overhead.
Dragonflies abound. From the super tiny one who just landed near the spigot for a morning sip of water (full-wing span about the size of my pinky nail) to the very large one I saw yesterday, all transparent with a black body and black triangle tattoos all over its wings, perched quite comfortably atop a flowering shrub. It was surely 4″ side to side. Dragonflies eat pests, especially enjoying the mosquito-as-a-snack, and thus the next good sign.
Mosquitos. Have hardly had any. One or two evenings we were bothered, but mostly, we are kind of not being eaten for dinner. Which is lovely. Shout out to the dragonflies for chomping them up!!
The pool water is clean and clear and a wading pool sits nearby for tiny feet. Water toys and floaters brighten the backyard vignette despot the intense heat. My hibiscus are all madly flowering, each shouting “Grace!” upon opening.
As for the gardener, whose neglect and late-late-late planting and attention have been quite noticed, she is deeply and fully aware, with great gratefulness, of how the garden responds with beauty and forgiveness…anyway.
Despite the dry-dry-dry, intense heat, life grows here. Abundant life.
From the patio swing early on a summer day (with piping hot coffee in a vintage jeanie-green cup and my new MacBook Pro, sincerely yours :: The Tender.
“Do you know the difference between wasps and bees?”
Her quick answer: “One has a bad attitude.”
Hahhahaha. She is correct. Wasps have terrible, mean-spirited attitudes. They attack without provocation, like to eat meat red meat (including the poor gardener trying to do good work) and also sting bees! They stink!
Don’t kill bees. Bees are good, industrious, team players, really. They truly, really will not attack you if you just let them live their lives. I can work in a pot of flowers alongside them and we chat all-neighborly-like without any fear of stinging. In fact, a good honey bee will get what he needs, bid adieu and come back later to join you, using you as a landmark to find the “good stuff.” Bees are wonderful.
Industrious!
Because I grow a lot of desirable flowers and sweet stuff, the wasps like to roost here. I have driven out some major nest-attempts in at least four of their usual city-building areas in my yard. So, I don’t even think they have hives on my property anymore. But they fly over the fence from neighbors yards (those neighbors that are never in their yards and have allowed a wasp-stronghold to be built, tsk).
Evil and mean. Bully.
But I have declared this year to be the year of the war on wasps. Because they are so aggressive and dangerous, because they drive away the desired bees, because my grandbebes need a safe place to play – all these reasons are why I walk around with a garden hose in one hand and a can of wasp-killing-spray in the other.
If you are in the garden on a very warm summer morning, watering the squares and pots to prepare them for a blazing-hot day, with only the slightest of breezes, at 8 o’clock sharp, you will hear the church bells. And they play on for several minutes.
I probably live at least 3 or 4 miles from the church that shares them. And I was surprised this morning again (every year I am surprised, that churches still do that). I am pleased that neighborhood associations haven’t stopped it. And I join in on the praise they are meant to raise to heaven.
The sun was bright-so-bright this morning. A wasp I tried to spray zoomed right into me in an apparent attack mode, but I did not get stung (I am heavily involved daily in the war on wasps). But I listened.
Singing birds. Different songs, all beautiful.
The slight roar in my ears when a breeze is about to move leaves.
The fluttering leaves. Yes, I heard them. You have to pay attention, but you can.
My dog’s satisfied yeow as she wallers in the grass to scratch her own back (poor, neglected baby).
The pool water pump, steady and rhythmic, cleaning the water and re-delivering. Any sort of water movement is wondrous.
Thus I also enjoyed the sound of my neighbor’s sprinkler system. She unknowingly waters some of my borders and that is an added bonus.
Then the bells. The church bells. The grand finale to the morning’s garden song.
Thank-You, Father for the sounds, for the birds and bees and fluttering leaves. Thank-you for the sounds of life and flowing water and church bells on a summer day. Hope I can add some goodness and sweet sounds into the atmosphere today….
So hot. Like 105 and 106-degrees hot. My friend, Kaye, posted this report this morning:
YES! We did see a little bit of rain last night! It was wonderful! But we still need to pray for rain because it was [not] even close to being enough. Currently in Colorado there are 12 wildfires burning, temps are over 100º, and there is little or no humidity. In Estes Park Saturday 22 homes + 2 outbuildings burned. In the High Park fire near us, there have now been 248 homes confirmed destroyed and about 50 out buildings. the fire has grown to 83,205 acres and is down to only 45 % containment. I heard on the news that an estimated 13,000 people are displaced from their homes statewide. So let’s keep praying for rain! Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!!!!!
Kaye was referencing, in part, our Heaven Fest Leadership Meeting last night (as well as all the prayer at churches across the state, I know), where we spent some time crying out to God for rain, for containment, for relief from the fires. Just across the hall from us at The Ranch in Loveland (in the 1st National Bank building), a press conference and report was happening for the displaced, the evacuees. There was heavy stuff happening.
One hour later, while on a flat-bed tour outside so the team could see where everything would be at Heaven Fest this year, a cloud cover came and there was some drop in the temp. Then thunder and lightening and sprinkling, then raining. And our weather patterns, usually always swooping down and away from the northeast – we actually saw heading west – toward the High Park fire. Some of our leadership rode home in torrents of rain. It was cool.
On Saturday our neice Lori and her daughters almost had to evacuate their Estes Park home where a cabin caught on fire less than a mile away. We were all on stand-by and it was dealt with. The next morning, a bear was in the ri neightbor’s yard, surely driven closer in by the ruckus.
Lori took this photo from her deck Saturday.
The heat is taking a toll. The grass is burning up. The dog can’t be out. Neighborhoods are losing power. There is a 100% ban on any fireworks in Colorado this year. As it should be.
The bear near Lori’s house.
Colorado burning under worst wildfires in a decade
http://www.latimes.com/videogallery/70671480/News/Toll-from-Colorado-wildfire-raised-to-248-homes VIDEO
Colorado wildfires rage out of control amid triple-digit temps
I limp into the house after a crazy-busy (truly miraculous, but wow-exhausting) week of Pastor’s and Ministry Leader’s Gatherings. I drop my computer bag and kick off my shoes.
Outside, I nearly trip over the giant Tonka Fire truck on the patio and the hose gets stuck on a tiny tikes car as I attempt to water my potted plants.
Tall glass of ice cold water. I plop onto the swing and swing in to be gently rocked….wait, what is that? Wet!
Hahaha. The grandbebes have been here. While I was gone, they came to swim. I missed the hugs and kisses. I missed the sound of their laughter. I missed a summer day with my favorite people in the universe.
But the proof of their recent presence remains, perfumes the air and makes me smile.
Signed, a slightly damp nonna